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If you are already on a fitness-healthy diet, you probably know that it’s best to eat five or six moderate meals per day rather than three large ones. You may also be taking supplements such as creatine and glutamine but there’s a component to diet and supplementation that you may not have considered -timing. What time you take a particular supplement can almost be as crucial as which supplements you choose.

With that in mind I’ve broken down the day to suggest the optimum times to eat and take certain supplements for maximum gains and fat loss. Note this schedule is built around the assumption of a late afternoon workout (5-6PM). Given that you’ll be dividing your nutrition among several meals, you will have ample opportunity for supplementation. The recommended dosages on supplements may be a little high for beginners, so consider working up to them gradually.

Breakfast

You should consume your first meal of the day shortly after you wake up. If you are trying to lose body-fat you may want to do 30-45 minutes of cardio before or a HIIT session. Otherwise, you should eat within a half hour of waking up to reinvigorate your body after several hours of fasting. Your breakfast meal should contain ample carbohydrates and protein. For protein you should eat about one fifth, or 20%,of your daily total. In other words a 200-pound athlete should eat about 40 grams of protein at breakfast. You also need plenty of carbohydrates-about 25% of your daily total. If you are trying to getting leaner don’t worry about gaining excess body-fat as this time of the day your body has the highest insulin sensitivity levels which means that it needs to produce very little insulin to get the job of transporting nutrients into appropriate places. And when you have low levels of insulin in your body it is almost impossible to gain excess bodyweight. Besides most of the nutrients consumed this time of the day will be absorbed very efficiently and not be stored as fat. Breakfast is also the time to begin your day’s supplementation and vitamins C and E are a good place to start. These aid the body and promote recovery by destroying free radicals in tissues. Take about 1000mg of vitamin C and 400 IU of vitamin E with your morning meal. Also take your multivitamin, which should include minerals in the morning. Keep in mind that the recommended daily allowances (RDA) refer to the minimums an average person needs for general health. They don’t take into account therapeutic benefits applicable to sports performance and recovery from strenuous activity. So read labels and find a multi-vitamin that has more than the bare minimum RDA.

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